There are all sorts of sound reasons for footballers not to stomp off a pitch
in protest at racial abuse but none of them seemed to matter when
Kevin-Prince Boateng and AC Milan headed for the dressing room 25 minutes
into the club’s ‘friendly’ against Pro Patria.

Inspiring is the only way to describe AC Milan’s response in a country where Mussolini-veneration is on the rise and on a continent where Uefa continue to dish-out risibly low fines while printing T-shirts with hollow anti-racism messages.

Reason No 1 for staying on the pitch is that fans of losing teams will know they can have a match abandoned and so save their heroes with a few cretinous chants. But this is way down the consideration list. The point is that footballers, like the rest of us, have a right to go to work without being racially insulted and dehumanised, and are not being protected by their industry, which is failing in its duty of care.

One-world rhetoric is as limp as old celery, in Britain as much as Italy. Never mind the irony of Milan being controlled by Silvio Berlusconi, an ardent nationalist. This was a breakthrough and a warning to the bigots who are abusing their freedoms.

Eccentric Balotelli is not for turning

Before Christmas I suggested that Roberto Mancini was failing in his alternating good cop/bad cop treatment of Mario Balotelli, who seemed confused by the Manchester City manager’s belief that he is some kind of special paternal project.

Pictures of their grappling match on the City training ground tend to support this interpretation. The details will be disputed, but Mancini appears to be part-aggressor in the tangle. He seems permanently incapable of deciding whether to love or fight his eccentric countryman.